Consider Phlebas

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it....

Transition

There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

The Reality Dysfunction: Night's Dawn Trilogy, Book 1

In AD 2600, the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems, and throughout inhabited space the Confederation Navy keeps the peace.

Revelation Space

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.

Singularity Sky

In the 21st century, the perfection of faster-than-light travel and the rise of a prodigious artificial intelligence known as the Eschaton altered the course of humankind. New civilizations were founded across the vastness of space. Now, the technology-eschewing world known as the New Republic is besieged by an alien information plague. Earth quickly sends a battle fleet - but is it coming to the rescue, or is a sinister plot in motion?

A Night Without Stars: A Novel of the Commonwealth: Chronicle of the Fallers Series, Book 2

The planet is isolated from the rest of the universe, unable to seek help as it's targeted by hostile aliens. Bienvenido's ruling authorities have slowly responded to this gradual infiltration, but they have no idea that a highly organized invasion is now under way, designed to wipe out all human life on the planet. All factions must work together to survive. Unfortunately, due to prejudice against enhanced Eliter humans and crippling technophobia, the parochial government won't collaborate.

A Deepness in the Sky

After thousands of years searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. There are two human groups: the Qeng Ho, a culture of free traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds.The group that opens trade with the aliens will reap unimaginable riches.

The Naked God: Night's Dawn Trilogy, Book 3

Quinn Dexter is loose on Earth, destroying the giant arcologies one at a time. As Louise Kavanagh tries to track him down, she manages to acquire some strange and powerful allies whose goal doesn't quite match her own. The campaign to liberate Mortonridge from the possessed degenerates into a horrendous land battle, the kind that hasn't been seen by humankind for 600 years; then some of the protagonists escape in a very unexpected direction.

The Neutronium Alchemist: The Night's Dawn Trilogy, Book 2

The ancient menace has finally escaped from Lalonde, shattering the Confederation's peaceful existence. Those who succumbed to it have acquired godlike powers but now follow a far-from-divine gospel as they advance inexorably from world to world. On planets and asteroids, individuals battle for survival against the strange and brutal forces unleashed upon the universe.

Red Mars

Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, Red Mars is the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's best-selling trilogy. Red Mars is praised by scientists for its detailed visions of future technology. It is also hailed by authors and critics for its vivid characters and dramatic conflicts.

For centuries, the red planet has enticed the people of Earth. Now an international group of scientists has colonized Mars. Leaving Earth forever, these 100 people have traveled nine months to reach their new home. This is the remarkable story of the world they create - and the hidden power struggles of those who want to control it.

Blindsight

Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving, hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold. After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.

Babylon's Ashes: The Expanse, Book 6

The Free Navy - a violent group of Belters in black-market military ships - has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets. The colony ships heading for the thousand new worlds on the far side of the alien ring gates are easy prey, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them. James Holden and his crew know the strengths and weaknesses of this new force better than anyone.

House of Suns

Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every 200,000 years to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings.

Foundation

For 12,000 years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Sheldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future, to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last 30,000 years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire, both scientists and scholars, and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a fututre generations.

Fallen Dragon

In the distant future, corporations have become sustainable communities with their own militaries, and corporate goals have essentially replaced political ideology. On a youthful, rebellious impulse, Lawrence joined the military of a corporation that he now recognizes to be ruthless and exploitative. His only hope for escape is to earn enough money to buy his place in a better corporation.

Rainbows End

Set a few decades from now, Rainbows End is an epic adventure that encapsulates in a single extended family the challenges of the technological advances of the first quarter of the 21st century. The information revolution of the past 30 years blossoms into a web of conspiracies that could destroy Western civilization. At the center of the action is Robert Gu, a former Alzheimer's victim who has regained his mental and physical health through radical new therapies, and his family.

Pushing Ice

2057. Humanity has raised exploiting the solar system to an art form. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclear-powered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. And they're good at it. The Rockhopper is nearing the end of its current mission cycle, and everyone is desperate for some much-needed R & R, when startling news arrives from Saturn: Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, has inexplicably left its natural orbit and is now heading out of the solar system at high speed.

Ready Player One

At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn't What It Used to Be

Power is shifting - from large, stable armies to loose bands of insurgents, from corporate leviathans to nimble start-ups, and from presidential palaces to public squares. But power is also changing, becoming harder to use and easier to lose. As a result, argues award-winning columnist and former Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím, all leaders have less power than their predecessors, and the potential for upheaval is unprecedented.

Altered Carbon

In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Rosemary Harper doesn't expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and, most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman, she's never met anyone remotely like the ship's diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot; chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks, who keep the ship running; and Ashby, their noble captain.

Hyperion

On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.

Publisher's Summary

The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh: Jernau Morat Gurgeh, The Player of Games, master of every board, computer, and strategy.

Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game... a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.

I thoroughly enjoyed, Peter Kenny's rendition of Iain M. Banks' "The Player of Games." Kenny's interpretation, especially his unbelievable mimicking of different drone-like voices, brought the book to life.

"Consider Phlebas," the first Culture novel where man and machine lives in a symbiotic relationship, is in my view, only an introduction to the background aspects necessary to understand this book.

The main character, Gergey, an over comfortable citizen of the Culture, is given a chance to get his cage rattled by playing the game of his life! But like the mysterious narrator tells you in the beginning, it is a story about a battle that was not a battle and a game that turned out not to be a game.

While going with Gergey on this "rollercoaster ride," experiencing how he comes to life, experience emotions he has never felt before, something at the back of the listener's mind keeps on gnawing at you, "Who is this mysterious narrator?" The book plays its own game with you, the question is, will you win or it.

This story is set in an intriguing and fascinating world (Culture). It gives exciting perspectives on our own society!The narrator did a great job, making all the characters vivid through convincing and diverse voices.

In Iain M. Banks' second Culture novel, The Player of Games (1988), a playful narrator tells the story of Jernau Morat Gurgeh, a jaded 60-year old master game player living in the Culture, a vast interstellar civilization that appears to be something of a utopia. If anything can be said to run such a sprawling and creatively anarchic civilization that solved interstellar travel over 11,000 years ago, the Culture is run by its AI "Minds," spaceships that give themselves clever names like Cargo Cult, Little Rascal, So Much for Subtlety, Of Course I Still Love You, Kiss My Ass, and Just Read the Instructions, and range from modest military models to vast habitats accommodating billions of people. Thanks to the Minds and to the Culture's advanced technology and virtually unlimited access to resources, every humanoid or sentient drone living on one of its many worlds, orbitals, or ships can get or make or do or be anything he or she wants, there is no poverty, disease, money, blackmail, crime, or sexual or racial discrimination, people can change genders and safely "gland" (manufacture at will within their own bodies) any drug as often as they like, fatal accidents are rare, life-spans are long (people in their thirties seem like "toddlers" to people in their 100s), information is mostly free, and everyone is theoretically safe and fulfilled.

The problem, then, for Gurgeh is that he is probably the best games player in the Culture, which, when added to the safety and comfort of his milieu, has led to his having become disaffected by games (and life) played without stakes other than prestige. Sure he cares about that and feels that winning is better than sex or any "glanding," but really, according to Chamlis, a 4,000+ year old drone friend of the family, Gurgeh is at heart a gambler, and "a true gambler needs threat of real loss and danger to feel alive." Thus when Chamlis says that the best Minds of the Culture are in Contact, where they tend to operate like gamblers while seeking out and dealing with new civilizations, Gurgeh perks up a bit.

And the main movement of the novel depicts Gurgeh's five-year Contact mission to master a game called Azad as he travels to a far off Empire called Azad to play. The Empire is an interstellar one founded upon obsolete things like exploitation, ownership, domination, competition, military might, media control, sexual discrimination, and basically everything the Culture opposes. And Azad the game is what holds it all together. The game is a complex affair played for weeks if not months with vast, multiple boards consisting of varied types of terrain, partially sentient pieces with minds of their own, resource and other cards, and complex rules and strategies that most Azadians spend their whole lives learning. The Azadians are also wont to wager on the game mutilation and incarceration and such. For the Azadians the game replicates the complexity of reality and is thus the means by which they earn the right to hold high government offices (including emperor). Will Gurgeh be able to learn the game well enough to compete with the locals? And how will playing the game affect his nature as a member of the Culture? And if he does somehow manage to do well, how will the xenophobic Azadians accept it? For that matter, does the Culture want him to fail or succeed? Banks never quite explains the rules in detail, but does depict Gurgeh researching the game, practicing with his Contact spaceship, and eventually playing against Azadian opponents in momentum changing, surprising, and gripping ways.

As in all his Culture novels, here Banks displays a fertile imagination, reveling in creating awesome things like the Fire World, a planet on which an entire ecosystem has evolved around a vast field of fire that traverses the world once a month. As in all his Culture novels, here Banks explores interesting ideas like the ways in which games and languages reflect culture and reality and change your mindset, etc., and the relative values of societies based on competition or cooperation, and so on. Banks is quite good at doing what the best sf does: using fantastic technology and environments and civilizations etc. to explore the way we live right now. He uses the tri-gendered Azad culture, with all its sexual bias, to make us think about our own bi-gendered cultures, and he uses the Culture to make us think about our own competition-driven, success-oriented, resource-wasting, environment-polluting, poverty-exacerbating cultures.

And Banks does all that with a clean, cool prose. A millennia-old drone floats up an elevator shaft instead of using the elevator car with a "geriatric precosity." Gurgeh experiences culture-shock "as though the city, the planet, the whole Empire swirled around him in a frantic spinning tangle of nightmare shapes; a constellation of suffering and anguish, an infernal dance of agony and mutilation." The Emperor absorbs some bad news "At the top of the high tower . . . seemingly locked into the stone like a pale statue or a small tree born of an errant seed. The wind from the east freshened, tugging at the stationary figure's dark clothes and howling around the dark bright castle, tearing at the canopy of swaying cinderbuds with a noise like the sea."

Audiobook reader Peter Kenny does a fine job. I especially enjoyed his drone and ship voices, differentiated so as to evoke their different personalities: avuncular drone Chamlis, snarky American renegade drone Mawhrin-Skel, prissy library drone Flere-Imsaho, Indian warship the Limiting Factor, etc.

Fans of elegant, imaginative, philosophical, and political space-opera flavored by plenty of wit and bite should enjoy The Player of Games.

This is a stunning book, that I had not read, since it first came out when I was a kid. But it was good enough to stick with me over the many intervening years. This reading is fantastic. Great interpretations of the characters. Hope the accents don't upset anybody. Highly,highly recommended. If we are lucky Mr.Kenny will be reading the rest of the series too.( He also did a great job with -Consider Phlebas) ps please hurry with the others, I can't wait until -Excession is given this treatment

11 of 11 people found this review helpful

Marc

Elvanfoot, United Kingdom

11/14/11

Overall

"Probably now my favourite novel"

Without giving anything away, this is a masterful demonstration of how wonderful science-fiction can be to illustrate real-world issues, as well as providing insights on such issues and how we could deal with them better. But beside that, this novel is funny, thrilling, exciting and there are very few authors who can match Banks' imaginative power. This is a rich and consistent world, detailed and nuanced. In my view, the ideal starter book to Banks' culture universe novels, i.e. don't worry if you haven't read any of his other books.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Danny Puzzle

11/30/14

Overall

Performance

Story

"The cunning robots"

I was really looking forward to listening to this book as I had read very positive reviews but I didn't enyoy it at all, mainly because I found the main character unlikable and annoying. I know that he's supposed to be that way for the story to unravel, still, it's hard to follow a story if you're not invested in the protagonist's fate.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the worldbuilding. You could really picture the rooms in the Azad palaces, and it was really clever how Banks uses the robot to explain their customs.

To sum up, even though I admit it's a good book, it's not my thing so I won't be reading any more culture books any time soon.

Ian M. Banks' Culture novels are beyond belief in their scope and richness of detail. They are detailed with plots, characters and environments vividly described. That a story of this length can grip you from beginning to end is amazing and I have no hesitation in recommending it.

IMB's Culture stories are a fascinating mix of sociology, solid character development, lavish detail and staggering imagination. The utopian scale of the Culture is beyond anything I have read in 35 years love of sci-fi and each one of IMB's novels adds more and more levels of interest.

If you've heard or read Consider Phelbas, this is different as it's set within the Culture but you'll love it! The action is break-neck and the story is rich!

My only criticism of the audio version is that the character names are so 'out-there' that it can be a problem to remember who's who. It is easier with a hard-copy novel. But that is small criticism and a backhanded compliment to what is a staggeringly good book that is also very, very well read.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Shane

Bristol, United Kingdom

2/13/12

Overall

"Amazing audio book"

An amazing listen! I’ve read the original book and one of advantages of hear the audio version is that you don’t spend ages trying to guess the pronunciation of the insane names.
A brilliant listen. I highly recommend it.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Patrik

Woking, United Kingdom

10/24/11

Overall

"Sci-fi at its best"

A very strong story with twists and turns that keeps you on your toes. It weaves in sci-fi in the story in a very subtle way making you believe in the world described for you. Exceptionally read by Peter Kenny, I truly belive he felt the pain of the main character. A definite worthy read.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

patrick

whitley bay, United Kingdom

9/16/11

Overall

"Flippin Marvelous !!!"

Im really enjoying my long car journeys now with the great collection of books offered by audible. Never having read any of Iain Banks books before, so I didnt know what i was getting into. So two books in to the cutlure series "consider Phelbas and player of games" and im VERY VERY much hooked! So enjoying the culture series. Listened to the first book and loved the settings, GSVs, drones, and the characters !!! Peter Kenny is a fantastic narrator, bringing this amazing sci fi world to life with his clever charactor voices and build up to tense moments !!!

Great stories, great narration !!!!

In short..... Brilliant!!!!

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Thing Reviewer

2/8/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Fun philosophically interesting yarn"

A lot easier going than a lot of the culture series.

A straight forward single narrative plot driven book.

Has its philosophical questions very much on display

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

J

12/18/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Well Played"

loved it for the commute. Not structurally taxing or focused on the minutea but still detailed and a rewarding read/listen

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Tamlyn Kemp

12/1/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Brilliant, engaging story; incredibly well read."

This is my first Culture story as an audio book. Agreement seems universal that the story is great, but what really made this for me was the reading, especially the voices of the drones, really brought it to life.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

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